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Thursday, March 13, 2014

Most Beautiful Bird in the World, Hummingbird

Male Ruby-throated Hummingbird.

Hummingbird has more to offer more than how
it’s look, even the smallest bird in the world coming from the family of
hummingbird. There’re many species of hummingbird around the world. In the
North and South America only there are more than hundreds of them. So what we’re
looks up too? The Ruby-throated Hummingbird:

Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris)
easily recognize from its throat’s color of iridescent red, this type of color
also possessed by Anna’s Hummingbird whilst the throat is more to purple-pink. They’re
nectar’s eater and will travelling around the garden to find flowers to get its
nectar. Peoples also feed them from a feeder made suitable for them by mixed
some sugar ¼ with water. They always prefer their feeder to be in red.

Female Ruby-throated Hummingbird at man made feeder.

This small bird also a migrating species
during the winter they will travel to South by crossing the Mexican Gulf in a
single flight. In order to do this they must store their energy before the flight
begins. The whole journey will take around 800 km (500 mi). So the hummingbird
will stored this energy in the form of body fat.

The Ruby-throated Hummingbird size is
around 7 to 9 cm (2.8 – 3.5 in) long and has 8 to 11 cm (3.1 to 4.3 in)
wingspan. Their weight can range from 2 to 6 g (0.071 to 0.212 oz.). With males
averaging 3.4 g (0.12 oz.) and the females is average at 3.8 g (0.13 oz.). The
males as me already know have beautiful iridescent ruby red in their throat
with mostly greyish green vest and greyish white below. Their head also in
iridescent color green. The females have simple color of green back, black mask
with white behind and white underparts.

Female feeding on nectar from flower.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things
about hummingbird is their ability to float in the air. Instead of moving
forward they can stay in the same place or moving backward. During the courtship
display they will perform a special talent of flying this wills includes dive
and rise and also horizontal arcs. Meanwhile the Ruby-throated Hummingbird is
polygynous soon after the mating the male will fly away and the females will
take care all of the parental care.

Since the size is quite small so
hummingbird can easily be a pray for another species of birds, cats, lizards,
snakes, bullfrogs, green frogs and also many other animals that feed on small
birds. Instead for hummingbird itself they don’t just consumed on nectars but sometimes
also catch insects for protein.

Well, maybe I hope that’s good enough for
you to get interested to know more about this hummingbird and will look after
them during the summer. Remember the different between the Ruby-throated
Hummingbird than Anna’s Hummingbird they’ll looked almost exactly the same.